Month: October 2007

Categories
History

Made in occupied Japan

Occupied
I found this tag in a shop.

Since 1945 until 1952 all products that where exported from Japan to the United States of America had to have a tag with the sentence “Made in occupied Japan” written. Noways when you find something with this tag it’s like a “warranty” that the stuff you are buying was produced during the Japanese post-war years; I guess is useful for collectors to know this.

Categories
Japanese

Japanese bookmarks

I’ve been some years learning Japanese, during the learning process I’m using many tools, tutorials, resources I found on the net. In this post I will list which I consider the best bookmarks everyone should know if you are in the process of learning Japanese.

Grammar:

  • Guidetojapanese: the best web I know to learn the basic Japanese grammar. The author uses a very clear and direct style.
  • Jgram: is a big grammar database/dictionary.

Dictionaries:

  • Alc: the best Japanese-English dictionary. It’s based on the commercial dictionary called EIJIRO.
  • EDICT: is the one I use everyday.
  • Goo: used by many Japanese, has many search options and examples with each result.
  • Ruigo: Japanese thesaurus.

Kanjis:

  • Kanjisite: there are only around 1.000 kanjis but I love the simple interface and the selected words for each kanji
  • JapaneseKanji.com: this is the best site/application to learn kanji on the net that I know.
  • Kanji practice: this one has even videos showing the correct calligraphy for each character.
  • Kanjiaday: one kanji featured each day.

Various:

Which are your favorite sites to learn Japanese and languages in general?

Categories
JapaneseTV

Bush vs Takeshi Kitano and Hard Gay

A while ago, Takeshi Kitano did a special TV show about the one he did in the 80s and 90s called “Owarai Ultra Quiz”. In the show there is George Bush launching missiles to Takeshi, Hard Gay and other Japanese comedians using a satellite. Watch the video, it’s surrealistic.